Pages

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The June FOMC minutes were released today. One interesting development we learned from it is that some FOMC members are becoming concerned that the Fed may be slowly taking on more and more financial intermediation activities that traditionally have been provided by banks. In the limit, this would amount to a nationalization of banking. The Fed would become the only bank and your local bank, if it were still around, would be its branch office. All money would be Fed liabilities and there would no longer be a distinction between inside and outside money. In other words, the Fed would directly control the money supply.1 Money supply targeting might actually become vogue again!

We are a long way from that point, but some FOMC members are concerned we are on that path to it. This concern centers around the Fed's new overnight reverse repurchase agreement program (ON RRP). It provides a means for the Fed to temporarily return some its treasury holdings to a safe asset-scarce market and to influence short-term interest rates. It also provides a super safe alternative to institutional investors who normally park their funds in the money market. And that is where it could be problematic. Here is the FOMC:

In addition, a number of participants noted that a relatively
large ON RRP facility had the potential to expand the Federal Reserve’s
role in financial intermediation and reshape the financial industry in
ways that were difficult to anticipate.

The
Federal Reserve Bank of New York has emerged as the single largest
player in an important segment of the short-term lending market that was
at the epicentre of the financial crisis.The Fed’s decision to quadruple its trading with
government money market funds in the repurchase or “repo market” is a
sign that the central bank is now engaging more directly with the shadow banking system at the expense of large Wall Street banks... Armed with a balance sheet of $4.3tn of bonds purchased during
quantitative easing, the Fed is using what it calls its reverse repo
programme, or RRP, to trade with money funds at a time when tough new
regulatory standards have made such borrowing less attractive for the
banks. Rather than lending to the banks, money market funds have sharply boosted their dealings with the US central bank.

[...]

Bill Dudley, New York Fed president, warned
last month that if use of the repo facility were to grow too quickly it
might “result in a large amount of disintermediation out of banks
through money market funds and other financial intermediaries into the
facility. This could encourage further enlargement of the shadow banking
system.” Without a cap on use of repo with the Fed, investors who ordinarily
lend to banks could instead flock to the central bank in times of market
stress, exacerbating a flight from funding of banks, he warned.

Now, as noted by Izabella Kaminski, if this specific concern actually happens it would only usurp the financial intermediation services provided to institutional investors. There would still be the retail investor market to conquer. She says this second step could occur if the Fed started issuing e-money for retail customers. That may be a way off, but Kaminski believes it is coming. And she believes the June FOMC minutes indicate the members sees it coming too. Here is Kaminski:

What the Fed seems to be acknowledging is that if its reverse repo programme (RRP) proves too popular it could end up undermining the business of conventional deposit-taking banks. In other words, the Fed is prepping us for the idea that this is the route by which the central bank could become a universal banker... The thing to note, however, is the language and tone being used to
communicate these ideas. The message is clearly that the Fed is mindful
and fearful of becoming a universal banker and that this is not at all
something that it wants.

If all of this comes to fruition I will be worried. The Fed is already a monopoly producer of the unit of account and this would make it a monopoly producer of the medium of exchange too. Monopolies have less incentive and less ability to nimbly respond to changing market conditions. In this case, that means changes in money demand. Unless technology changes so that the Fed is capable of knowing in real time region-specific changes in money demand, it will be applying a one-size-fits-all monetary policy that will intensify regional economic differences. We might begin to think twice about the United States as an optimal currency area. But hey, at least we will all have our own Fed checking accounts!

1Tomas Hirst and Frances Coppola note that if the Fed does become a universal bank there will still be some private financial intermediation, even if on the margin. So it would not have 100% direct control of the money supply, but close.

5 comments:

"some FOMC members are becoming concerned that the Fed may be slowly taking on more and more financial intermediation activities that traditionally have been provided by banks"

The reason this is happening is because inter-mediation is breaking down. What do you propose happens to solve this? The idea of the fed purchasing assets and inter-mediating through banks or similar has always been less than optimal, now the fed is imply taking it to the next level. The most effective policy would be to not engage in asset purchasing at and just directly affect the interest rate by expanding money to people broadly.

"The Fed is already a monopoly producer of the unit of account and this would make it a monopoly producer of the medium of exchange too."

Why would banks cease to produce deposits? New competition from the fed in pmts/deposits should foster innovation.

If the Fed did QE right, there would be less disintermediation. That is, permanent monetary injections that permanently change expected path of nominal income, nominal spending, and in turn demand and supply of credit. See http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2013/06/is-fed-squeezing-shadow-banking-system.html

"Why would banks cease to produce deposits?" A universal bank means that all banks are part of the Fed. Banks are just branches of the Fed and so their liabilities are Fed liabilities in this scenario.

Isnt QE like OMO's but with more counterparties? Just like the new ON RRP programme includes greater counterparties. You're also arguing for greater fed involvement in intermediation when you support QE am I right? QE also occured in response to disintermediation.

Your not really against the creep towards universal banking you seem to support it by supporting QE. If the fed was to stick to monetary policy it wouldn't be purchasing any assets or lending (investment banking and commercial banking) and would target the interest rate just by affecting the money supply. It would also provide a pmt system.

I think the issue is fundamentally about monetary policy effectiveness. If monetary policy is ineffective then banks and markets will decline leading to dis-intermediation and the fed will have to take over. What is the most effective way to conduct MP? Expanding the money supply to people will be permanent because it cant be retracted unlike MP conducted through asset purchases. People spend on consumption more than current fed counterparties at zlb. Current counterparties will demand money infinitely or higher at zlb becuase investment returns are too low. People wont forgo consumption. Therefore expanding to people is more effective in generating growth.

A system where all bank accounts are held at the central bank is of course exactly what’s advocates of full reserve banking want (e.g. Milton Friedman, Laurence Kotlikoff, John Cochrane, etc). That needn’t involve everyone opening an account at the CB: commercial banks could act as AGENTS for small businesses and households. I.e. the latter would deposit $X at their commercial bank, with the latter than depositing the $X at the CB.

Re David Beckworth’s claim that “this would amount to a nationalization of banking..”, that’s not quite right in that the money creation process can be separated from lending. As Irving Fisher (an advocate of full reserve) put it, “We could leave the banks free, or at any rate far freer than they are now, to lend money as they please, provided we no longer allowed them to manufacture the money which they lend.”

That is, two traditional activities of commercial banks can be separated: 1, money creation and transfer, and 2, accepting sums which depositors want to be loaned and lending on that money. Nationalising the first does not mean the second has to be nationalised.

The financial intermediation this threatens is one where banks have deposits on the liability side and reserves on the asset side isn't it? This intermediation doesn't appear to achieve anything other than allow banks to take an arbitrage spread (foreign banks to a large extent - see http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2013/12/whos-borrowing-in-the-fed-funds-market.html#.U762S7EeNic). Unless the Fed starts getting involved in commercial lending, this doesn't really impact on intermediation between private investors and private borrowers, does it? (I'm assuming the reserve drain is not so great as to impact on required reserves.)